


There Are Worlds And Worlds And Worlds Inside You

by monsoon_moon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Absorbed feelings, M/M, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27407233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsoon_moon/pseuds/monsoon_moon
Summary: But of course Eli is sitting here, looking at him with blue eyes, and their father died almost ten years ago and it's been a year since Euan has seen Eli in person.  It makes sense that his memory is faulty. (He knows it's not.)
Relationships: Lighthouse Keeper Brother/Eldritch Horror Wearing His Drowned Brother as a Skin Suit
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	There Are Worlds And Worlds And Worlds Inside You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badritual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/gifts).



“Euan.”

Euan freezes in the doorway, eyes fixed on Eli's slumped form at the small scarred kitchen table. Eli stares back unblinkingly. He's wearing one of Euan's jumpers, an old, chunky cableknit Euan had picked up from their grandfather. It doesn't sit quite right on Eli's body, bunched oddly in places like Eli wasn't used to dressing himself, didn't understand how clothes sat.

“Grant saw you,” Euan blurts, “From the window, he saw you.”

Euan gestures to the thin glass slit nestled into the wall. Eli's head turns that way briefly then turns back to Euan. He still hasn't blinked. His eyes are very blue. So blue Euan sometimes thinks he sees other things in them – other worlds, vast galaxies, unknowable universes – and it's so strange because before last month Euan would have sworn Eli's eyes were the same warm brown as their father's. Would have bet his life on it because he'd spent hours and hours as a teenager with Eli and his brown eyes.

But of course Eli is sitting here, looking at him with blue eyes, and their father died almost ten years ago and it had been a year since Euan had seen Eli in person, before he washed up in Euan's harbour. It makes sense that his memory is faulty. (He knows it's not.)

Eli is still watching him, not calm exactly but waiting. Euan doesn't know what for but it makes him shiver inside his skin.

“He thought we were,” Euan says, making a hand gesture. He doesn't know why he's telling Eli this. He was embarrassed enough for the both of them hearing it himself. (And guilty. So very guilty.)

“We're brothers,” Eli says, tone as flat as his gaze.

“Well, I can't tell Grant that.” Euan sighs explosively, backing himself against the wall. He doesn't know why. Eli hasn't moved at the table, not even the twitch of a finger.

“Why?” Eli asks, and he's still. So so still.

“Because you died a year ago,” Euan whispers out on a breath that fogs briefly in the air before dissipating. He makes a note in his head to look at the heat. The lighthouse used to be cosy warm, stifling almost, but recently it's gotten colder the further you get from the centre of the rooms. There's no explanation Euan can fathom. (Yes there is.)

Eli doesn't say anything, not even to deny Euan's assertion. He merely tilts his head back to the window. The sliver of storm dark sky Euan can see seems briefly to meld into Eli's body. Euan blinks and they're back – just a window with a storm outside, Grant's boat a disappearing speck on the slate grey sea, and a man (not a man) sitting at a table in a too-big jumper.

“How did I die?” Eli asks, still looking out into the storm. For the first time in weeks Euan wishes he could see his brother's eyes.

“Mum said you drowned,” Euan says and every word is a razorblade against his ribs, chip chip chipping away. “You went out on the boat with your friends and never came home.”

“Maybe I swam here,” Eli says, “Maybe I had amnesia.”

He says it oddly, like his mouth has never formed the word before and it makes Euan frown. Eli had been obsessed with amnesia stories when he was a teen. He used to read book after book then get into Euan's bed late at night and whisper the stories in his ear. But that was before...well, before what their mother thought she saw and before everything that came after that.

“You drowned,” Euan says and now he's said it out loud, for the first time since his mother's letter arrived with the news (and a plea for him to come home which he will never answer) so many months ago, it finally feels real. “You're dead because you drowned.”

Except Eli's not dead. Eli's sitting at the table, looking out into the gloomy afternoon. Euan can see the individual strands of his hair and his freckled skin and the way his shoulders lift infinitesimally each time he breathes.

“You drowned,” Euan says again, louder, and it catches in his throat when Eli's chair scrapes across the stone floor, making Euan wince and press himself harder against the wall.

“I did,” Eli says in a voice that's not Eli's (Euan knew, he's known since the beginning), too flat, too emotionless. The Eli Euan remembers used to talk so fast his words fell out of his mouth before he could even get them in order. Euan had gotten very good at deciphering what he meant without having to ask him to repeat himself. This Eli speaks slowly, so deliberately it's almost as if the words need to be translated onto his tongue.

He moves slowly closer and it's Eli and it's not. The same long limbs and wide mouth. The same broad flat cheekbones and unruly eyebrows their mother always threatened to pluck. But there's none of Eli's usual gangling movements, like his brain was always a mile ahead of the rest of him. This Eli moves fluidly, everything in sync, like he's floating. (Like he's swimming.)

Euan blinks rapidly and Eli is close enough to touch. Close enough to brush his fingertips over Euan's cold cheek, so chilled from the frigid air at the edge of the room it's almost impossible to tell that Eli's skin is too cool for anything to be alive inside it. Almost.

“I did,” he says again, unblinking blue eyes staring into Euan's and Euan can see dying stars, expanding nebulas and other things, things he has no words for but that frighten him, deep in a buried place beneath his blood and his bone and his marrow. “I drowned. But then I came back. For you.”

Euan doesn't move as Eli drifts closer, lips brushing Euan's ear, breath a cool rush against already cool skin.

“The last thing he thought about were the nights in your bed,” Eli whispers. His voice is familiar as the sun and foreign as the bottom of the sea. “Amnesiacs and your hands.”

Euan blinks as if waking up.

“What?” he tries to say but his mouth feels thick and uncooperative.

“The last thing I though about was you,” Eli says, louder this time, shifting his head until their jaws graze then moving until their lips are almost brushing, until they're touching from hip to thigh. “Then everything is a blur and then I was here. On your island. Looking for you.”

His fingertips are cold against Euan's ribs and Euan doesn't know when Eli got them under his clothes. He tries to move but there's nowhere to go.

“He loved you,” Eli says and his breath ghosts Euan's mouth and Euan, god help his weak sick soul, Euan wants but...

“He?” Euan asks, but he's distracted by the briny smell of Eli's skin.

“I love you,” Eli says, looking Euan right in his eyes.

Eli's palm is a piece of ice pressed against the muscle above Euan's heart as he gives in, tilting his chin, welcoming Eli's questing mouth against his own.


End file.
